DSTS Two-day meeting

Important questions within the fields of social science, epidemiology as well as clinical trial research involve decomposing the effect of an interventions or exposure into direct and indirect effects working through a defined mediator; hopefully leading to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms. In this talk I present the class of natural effects models, which allows causal inference based mediation analysis to be understood (and performed) in terms of traditional regression analyses. I will introduce the model class and the interpretation of the parameters in the model. Next I will present a just published R-package, which makes estimation of natural effects models both simple and intuitive. Finally, I explain how natural effects models can be used to address more complex mediation questions; in particular multiple mediators.